The fishing industry's move to sectors have left small fishermen like Stephen Welch on the sidelines, unable to earn enough money to stay out at sea.
Watch the video at The South Coast Today.
The fishing industry's move to sectors have left small fishermen like Stephen Welch on the sidelines, unable to earn enough money to stay out at sea.
Watch the video at The South Coast Today.
Gloucester's and others' legal challenge to the Obama administration's management system for the New England groundfishery — a challenge to the government's interpretation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act — has come into sharper focus through a flurry of filings in U.S. District Court in Boston.
Together, the documents described the latest program pushed forward by NOAA in Amendment 16 as a misguided, camouflaged, agenda-driven and "illogical" sham aimed at disenfranchising small businesses while giving windfalls to larger company's and investing corporations.
Congressmen Barney Frank and John Tierney, both Massachusetts Democrats, last week jointly submitted an amicus brief to the original suit filed last summer by commercial fishing interests — and the cities of Gloucester and New Bedford — while nonprofit Food and Water Watch also filed a memorandum in support.
The case was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Rya Zobel, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration having 30 days to respond to the briefs. The court has yet to rule on the applications of Food and Water Watch to join the suit on behalf of the industry, or the earlier request of Conservation Law Foundation to come in as an ally of the government.
Read the complete story from the Gloucester Times.
Environmental officials on Delmarva are urging anglers to be cautious to prevent the spread of a fatal fish disease linked to a recent kill in Virginia.
The largemouth bass virus has been detected in recent years in both the Delaware and Maryland portions of the Nanticoke River, Delaware's largest bass fishery. It has not been implicated in any kills in either state and does not pose any risk to humans.
"It's a concern," said Delaware fisheries biologist Cathy Martin. "Largemouth bass is, of course, a big game fish with huge numbers of anglers. … We're always watching."
The virus was found in Delaware's portion of the Nanticoke most recently in 2006 and in Maryland's Marshyhope Creek, a tributary of the Nanticoke just over the state line, in 2007.
Read the complete story from Delmarva Now.
PORTLAND, Maine—Whether it's East Coast swordfish, Alaska king crab or Louisiana shrimp, seafood sellers have their own hook to pump up sales: a celebrity.
For swordfish this fall, sellers didn't turn to an actor, athlete or chef to push their product. Instead, it was the boat captain who caught the fish.
Swordfish sales soared at the Hannaford supermarket chain when the fish was promoted as being caught by Linda Greenlaw, a well-known Maine boat skipper featured on the Discovery Channel reality show "Swords: Life on the Line."
Seafood hawkers say using the names of well-known fishermen or fishing boats is a powerful marketing tool, especially in these days of oil spills, food-borne illness and increasing consumer awareness.
Read the complete story by the AP at The Boston Globe.
PARIS—An international conservation conference in Paris made progress Saturday on protecting sharks but didn't do anything to save the Atlantic bluefin tuna, which has been severely overfished to feed the market for sushi in Japan, environmental groups said.
Environmental groups had hoped to see bluefin fishing slashed or suspended, saying illegal fishing is rampant in the Mediterranean and that scientists don't have good enough data to evaluate the problem.
The commission agreed to cut the bluefin fishing quota in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean from 13,500 to 12,900 metric tons annually — about a 4 percent reduction. It also agreed on measures to try to improve enforcement of quotas on bluefin, prized for its tender red meat.
Sergi Tudela, head of WWF Mediterranean's fisheries program, attacked the "measly quota reduction." Oliver Knowles, Greenpeace oceans campaigner, complained that "the word 'conservation' should be removed from ICCAT's name."
Read the complete story by the AP at The Boston Globe.
PARIS, France, November 27, 2010 – Government delegates from 48 fishing nations today failed to protect the spawning grounds of the vanishing Atlantic bluefin tuna, either in the Gulf of Mexico or the Mediterranean, although they did approve some protections for whitetip and hammerhead sharks.
"Greed and mismanagement have taken priority over sustainability and common sense at this ICCAT meeting when it comes to Atlantic bluefin. This measly quota reduction is insufficient to ensure the recovery of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean Sea," said Dr. Sergi Tudela, head of WWF Mediterrean's Fisheries Programme.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species lists the bluefin tuna, Thunnus thynnus, as Data Deficient, saying population numbers have not been assessed since 1996. Atlantic bluefin have become extinct in the Black Sea and Caspian Sea.
"Bluefin tuna will be wiped out unless drastic action is taken to stop overfishing at the world summit going on right now. Without these magnificent fish, oceanic ecosystems could collapse," warned the international nonprofit Avaaz, which submitted a petition signed by more than 319,000 people to European Union negotiators at ICCAT, urging bluefin protection.
Read the complete story from The Environment News Service.
Some overseas suppliers of frozen fish are shortchanging consumers by including ice when they calculate the weight of their products, government inspectors have found.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has issued a warning to the industry, flagging this "fraudulent practice" involving frozen fish shipped in bulk containers and destined for Canadian stores and restaurants.
"CFIA inspection activities have determined that the weight of some imported frozen fish products include glaze [ice] as part of the declared net weight. This practice is unacceptable and in contravention of the Fish Inspection Regulations and the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Regulations," the industry notice states.
The border inspections began in mid-2009 after the agency fielded a trade complaint regarding unfair practices of some fish distributors. CFIA said Thursday it had accumulated enough evidence to issue the November notice to importers, which was sent to major suppliers overseas.
Read the complete story from the Vancouver Sun.
The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC) will meet Dec.13-16 in Virginia Beach, Va. to discuss proposals for 2011 fishery regulations.
The public is invited to attend and the meeting will be held at the Hilton on Atlantic Avenue in Virginia Beach. The meeting agenda is available on-line at www.mafmc.org. Or for more information call 757-213-3000.
Of the recreational fish on the table for regulations are river herring and shad, summer flounder, black sea bass and scup.
All three options being proposed for the 2011 call for drastic reductions.
Read the complete story from The Asbury Park Press.
Gloucester's Jack Flaherty is one of those remarkable fishermen who remains fit and just doesn't seem to age over the equinoxes and solstices.
Flaherty formulated what he calls an interesting "retirement" plan 25 years ago. He has recently been somewhat soured by fisheries regulations and enforcers and even hypocrisy within one of the groundfish sectors, but he still remains positive and has no plans to hang up his boots soon.
Flaherty's 41-year fishing career, which has taken him from Venezuela to Newfoundland, began in 1969 at the ringing in of the new year.
"I came up to Gloucester to attend a New Year's Eve party with an old Cambridge friend stationed at the U.S. Coast Guard base here," he recalled. "At the party, I got talking with a guy from Nahant, Ted Butler, who ran the 86-foot offshore lobster boat Western Ocean," explained Flaherty, who grew up and was educated in Cambridge. "He needed a man on the boat, and he offered me a job that night. I had already been laid off for the winter as a union pile driver."
Read the complete piece from the Gloucester Daily Times.
The once-bountiful Atlantic sturgeon that sustained Native Americans and North America’s first European settlers now may number in the hundreds in the Chesapeake Bay, but no one really knows.
“If sturgeon are to be restored to the Chesapeake Bay, it will happen on the backs of the James River population,’’ said Greg C. Garman, director for the Center for Environmental Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and one of the leaders of this collaborative effort.
Last month, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration announced that the Chesapeake Bay sturgeon was among five East Coast populations proposed for protection. The proposed listing is a desperate attempt to save “a fish of superlatives,’’ Garman said.
The listing would be aimed at protecting the fish’s habitat; their harvest is already banned.
“Sturgeon is the most endangered family of fish,’’ said Brad Sewell, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has pushed for protections. “Globally, they’re all going extinct.’’
Read the complete story by the AP at The Boston Globe.